The Financial Times (UK) reported in March that Home Office Minister Bob Ainsworth had held a series of meetings with groups representing biotechnology firms, pharmaceutical companies, and medical researchers to discuss possible new legislation to make it easier to crack down on animal rights extremists such as Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty.
The Financial Times reported that there will not be any single overarching bill designed specifically to target animal rights extremism, but rahter a series of more focused bills look at strengthening legal methods of dealing with activists.
The Financial Times cites the BioIndustry Assocation as saying that in the last quarter of 2002 alone, there were over 62 protests by animal rights activists at the homes of the employees of targeted companies and a total of 20,000 e-mails, phone calls or text messages directed at animal testing firms.
Aisling Burnard, chief executive of the BioIndustry Association, told The Financial Times,
We need better co-ordination of policing and better co-ordination with the Crown Prosecution Service. We must be able to get convictions.
So far, that has been easier said than done.
Source:
Plan to reign in animal rights protesters. Patrick Jenkins, The Financial Times (London), March 19, 2003.